ColemanMedia Report

The out of office auto-responder of Director of Southwest Sales Chase Atkinson sent an email message to Junior Media Planner Jared Kleinsmith early Monday afternoon, just minutes after Kleinsmith reportedly replied to Atkinson’s meeting request earlier that morning. According to email server logs at Ogilvy & Lather, Atkinson sent a message with the subject line of “Happy New Year” at 8:43 a.m., which Kleinsmith replied to just after 1:15 p.m. Two minutes and 12 seconds later, a message with the subject line “Out of Office” was received by Kleinsmith. “Really?” said Kleinsmith. “It’s annoying enough that people send emails the very first second I get to the office after a holiday. But when they don’t even know how to turn their auto-responder off, it makes me want to punch someone. My eight-year-old brother could program that to turn off at 9:00 a.m. How does this guy still have a job?”

An email sent to Junior Media Planner Julia Levinworth Tuesday morning by Western Region Sales Director Saul Silver, expressing wishes that the email would “find [her] well,” actually found Levinworth doing well, according to eyewitnesses at the scene. The 26-year-old planner was reportedly in very good spirits around the time server logs indicate that she opened the message. “It was kind of weird,” said Levinworth. “Usually, lines like that in a sales email tend to make me roll my eyes, because I know it’s there just to butter you up for the sales pitch. But for some reason I was in a really great mood on Tuesday. I don’t know, maybe there was something in the coffee or something. I have no clue what he was trying to sell, but it was very sweet of him to wish me well. I almost felt bad deleting it instead of taking the time to reply.”

The Center for Disease Control reported late Tuesday that the number of cases of ad rep overdose has skyrocketed this month, putting health and government officials on high alert and preparing for a potential pandemic in the online advertising industry.  According to the CDC, emergency room visits for media planners shot up 225% over July and 719% over August 2008.  ”This is an alarming trend nationwide,” said LA-USC County Hospital spokesperson Hal Hogenwinkle.  ”But locally it’s reached epidemic status.  We’ve seen media planners and buyers being admitted who have been exposed to nearly fatal levels of sales calls and emails.  Many of them can barely speak, save to scream ‘for the love of God, make it stop!’”  Officials with the CDC could not confirm the cause for the epidemic, but pointed to a 600,000% increase in sales calls and emails over the last three weeks as the probable culprit.